Background of CESSDA

CESSDA (Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives) aims to facilitate and promote increased and wider use of ‘high-quality’ data in social, economic and political research. The objective of CESSDA is to provide a comprehensive, distributed and integrated social science data Research Infrastructure (RI) which will facilitate and support research, teaching and learning of the highest quality throughout the social sciences in the European Research Area (ERA) and increase the impact of the activities of its members.

In order to strengthen and widen the existing research infrastructure and make it more comprehensive, efficient, effective, integrated and pan-European, a major upgrade is necessary. The aim of this upgraded infrastructure is to enable researchers to work together within and across research fields, regions and countries, developing leading-edge research methods and tools to analyse all forms of data relevant to social science research. This upgrade is done by means of the CESSDA Strengthening and Widening (SaW) project.

One of the objectives of the CESSDA SaW project is to deliver a state of play evaluation of social science data archives and services in ERA countries, identifying gaps and bottlenecks in existing services, and produce national development plans to close the gaps and overcome present barriers. The CESSDA SaW Capability Development Model is generated for this evaluation. The model specifies a set of objectives for establishing and operating CESSDA services for the social sciences and provides a common framework for evaluation of compliance.

This version of the CESSDA-CDM (Deliverable 3.1 of the CESSDA Strengthening and Widening (SaW) project) will be used and applied for other tasks within the SaW-project. After this usage, the model can be adjusted if needed.